BEFORE we had Madonna, France had Gustave Courbet – master chameleon and press manipulator extraordinaire. The 19th-century painter not only survived scandals, he also stoked them: depicting nudes in their dimpled, unidealized flesh and painting himself, over and over, in different guises.

Alas, “Gustave Courbet” – the retrospective of the man who paved the way to modern art, opening today at the Metropolitan Museum – is on display only until May 18. So if you want a peek at the painter who piqued the palettes of Manet, Monet, Dali and Picasso, now’s the time.

Here, on loan from museums in Paris and private collections around the world, are more than 130 works: landscapes, portraits and nudes, some paired with the photographs that inspired them.

The exhibit’s engaging wall text explains a lot, such as why his “Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine” created such a stir in the 1850s. (The “ladies” aren’t young, one is partially undressed, and the man’s hat in a boat nearby hints that they were up to more than sunbathing.)

Just around the corner is a far more explicit painting, “Origin of the World,” that’s Penthouse-ian in detail and was never intended for public display. (Parents, consider yourselves warned.)

But it was Courbet’s other works – heroic-size paintings of ordinary people doing ordinary things – that riled the critics, believing as they did that only royalty deserved such “historic” treatment.

Mostly, it seems, Courbet’s favorite subject was Courbet. An entire room is devoted to self-portraits, the Johnny Depp-like “The Desperate Man” among them. Others show him as a cellist, sculptor and duelist, though he was none of those. In fact, “The Wounded Duelist” was initially a painting of himself and a lover; after the affair ended, Courbet painted her out of the picture.

Years later, after political upheaval forced Courbet into prison and exile, he painted portraits of bloodied trout – metaphors, he explained, for himself.

“When I stop being controversial, I cease being important,” he wrote.

Judging how contemporary artists like Jeff Koons and John Curran have taken his cues, he’s never ceased to be important.